Are you faking it?

‘Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god?’

Have you ever faked anything?

In this world of ups and downs, there now appears to be ‘different versions‘ of the truth; or so they say? It becomes difficult to understand what is fact and what is fiction? Who to believe; who do we trust?

Some people we will have met in our lifetime or perhaps read about, will have proven to be fake. Not all they ‘cracked up’ to be as the saying goes. Tricksters and fraudsters unscrupulously preying on their victims; vulnerable or naïve at that time.

Some people we just don’t trust right from the start

“You’re a fake, baby, you can’t conceal it, know how I know, because I can feel it”.

Something new

Today we find out something new each and every day. It is part of life’s learning. We are told we are never ‘too old to learn’ (and that’s a fact not fiction!).
You can teach old dogs new tricks after all!

It is a very competitive world today; the pressures to ‘keep up’ and not fall behind the ‘pack’ are even more so than ever before. This is in our personal, work or leisure lives. The ‘it’s the taking part that counts‘ principle applies for sure but the reality is, people still want to win and losers don’t want to lose.

Yes, we can be gracious in defeat, but it hurts. We can ‘fake’ our feelings to mask our real pain inside. Mainly this is so we don’t appear to be weak or appear embarrassed.

And here is another point, why do people say ‘sorry’ when they show real emotion and cry when the television cameras are on them? We feel embarrassed to show our emotions in such situations because people are watching.

Why should they say sorry? Being genuine?

Resilience can’t be faked

This world can be an amazing one and a journey of a lifetime. But it also throws up the tough challenges we all come across; both personal and work related. We need to have that ability to stay strong and keep going, even when we don’t feel that we have the energy or will power to fight on.

We might need or be given, some coaching and guidance to help our confidence to stand up and face the issues. We may need and want someone we trust to help us get to the next stage. Because we want to be resilient; we need to be resilient. We can’t fake that desire to survive. We either want to survive or do not.

But resilient to what? Circumstances and situations may change as events unfold. ‘It’s not quite what we planned for; this is a different scenario altogether’. But we learn to adapt and our real-time resilience comes in to play.

We might ‘grab the sheets’ as emotions run through our veins and body. Our fight or flight responses. We feel the power surge of the satisfaction that we got through to the end.

We reached the resilient high. We did it together. We can’t fake resilience.

But what if we are faking the resilience ‘foreplay’?

People say they are resilient. They want to be resilient. Businesses and organizations say they are already resilient. ‘We have plans and procedures in place; we are well drilled’.

We work together with our partner agencies when the ‘stuff hits the fan’. We exercise our plans. Test the plans.

But just how genuine and thorough was the exercise and the test? The bits before the main event of the evening so to speak?

Did we truly know what goes where and why?

How long can we truly last? All day and all the night? For more than just a day? Is seven days too long?

You can’t fake true resilience. In the end, it will come out, in the wash.

Author: Paul Kudray, MSc FICPEM MEPS MAICP CBCI.

An international business resilience leader, Paul Kudray is a Fellow of the EPC and a Fellow of the Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management (FICPEM). He is a Lead Auditor for ISO 22301. In 2014 he founded his own consultancy and he is an excellent forward thinking resilience innovator and blogger. LinkedInpaul@kudrayconsulting.com.